The "Residential House in Navajeda", a project of the architectural cooperative gurea arquitectura cooperativa, is located on the outskirts of the village of Navajeda in Cantabria, about 25 kilometers from Santander. The single-family house was built in 2022 for a private client. With a floor area of around 155 m², the building presents itself as an abstract, compact band in the landscape: simple and contemporary in expression, but full of bioclimatic strategies that take advantage of the local climate.
The façade is characterised by natural materials: the outer wall and ceiling elements consist of glulam frames, the walls of which are clad with an eight-centimetre-thick layer of cork and plywood. A plastered plinth zone and a robust gravel border protect the cork façade from splashing water. The roof over the living areas is made of corrugated iron; the central conservatory is covered with corrugated polycarbonate sheets. Depending on the season, the translucent skin of the façade acts as a passive element: the high sliding doors allow the light-flooded room to be completely opened; Air can flow in and escape again through openings on the ridge, which leads to a cooling draft. When the sides are closed, the translucent shell acts as a sun trap: the sun's rays penetrate, heat the air and pass on heat to neighboring rooms with a time delay. The large, transparent façade panels allow for a flexible design of the interior and at the same time a visual relationship with the surrounding nature.
The interior is spatially complex, although the exterior volume appears linear. A conservatory divides the volume into two areas, which act as a greenhouse almost all year round and distribute the warm air throughout the house. The kitchen is located in the conservatory and serves as a connecting element between the larger western part of the living room, which houses a living room with a free-standing fireplace and a narrow gallery via a spiral staircase, and the smaller eastern part of the building, where there are further rooms and a bathroom. Heating is provided by a heated floor in an H-shaped layout, whose screed floors have integrated underfloor heating.
A central feature of the project is the implementation with prefabricated, industrialized building systems. The load-bearing and sheathing structure were manufactured in the workshop and assembled into a finished structure on site in just one week.
Source: gurea arquitectura cooperativa
Photos: Javier Bravo
Isometrics & parts of the drawings: Jaimie Nennig in the seminar FACADE 4.0
The preparatory work for this project publication was carried out as part of the building construction theory in the seminar FACADE 4.0 at the FATUK of the RPTU through a student thesis by Jaimie Nennig.
#korkfassade #naturbaustoff #kork
